


Kaleidoscopic

by friedgalaxies



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 16:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12280125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: Black currant for her Highness. Rose hip for Vex. Oolong for Vax. Puer for Grog. Green for Pike. Chai for Scanlan.Earl Grey for him.





	Kaleidoscopic

Black currant for her Highness. Rose hip for Vex. Oolong for Vax. Puer for Grog. Green for Pike. Chai for Scanlan. 

Earl Grey for him. 

You’re very lonely most of the time, sitting at your pristine table as the colors of life, death, love, and loss swirl in a never ending kaleidoscope around you. You gave up on trying to place the colors at different moments in your life long ago. You learned that when you think of a specific person, their memories and feelings flash brighter and stronger than the rest, pulsing in time with your heartbeat… if you still had one. 

Your heart stopped beating long ago, silenced by a spike of ice that jutted from the ruined walls of your father’s study where he spent most of his time. You never saw their faces or heard their voices before you died, before they died, as you were too far. You think you like it better that way. Now, your memories of your family aren’t twisted in anguish and pain, instead colored with warm, loving yellows and oranges, dashes of silver hope and blue sadness and deep, twisting maroon regret; happy, carefree Drakkia with her snickers and smiles that meant the tip of her forked tongue poked out between her teeth. Fumbling, charismatic, intelligent Jerahd, tripping over himself as he tried to explain things even you didn’t understand, theories he spent his whole life poring over, the brilliant gleam in his yellow-gold eyes. Strong, stoic Faeryn, laughing his deep, bassy laugh at jokes the two of you shared, the two oldest heirs, a reprieve from feeling the weight of the world on your shared shoulders for just a moment. Your father, Kruvanis, a hero among men, though a man among gods, a mortal among titans. Your mother, kind, caring, witty Penelope, longing for her motherly embrace in your final moments as blood burbled out of your mouth and tears streaked down your cheeks that rapidly grew colder by the second. 

You get visitors sometimes. Hardly long enough to share a cup of tea with them, though it always stays warm, steaming and crisp and ready. Your heartstrings pull and tug whenever one of them is in pain, whenever one of them faces a path you can’t guide them on, even as you clutch the hems of your robes and watch through the planes, swirling masses of fog-like feelings and memories parting to reveal a small rectangle through which you can watch them. They always seem to glance up when you can feel yourself shouting, though there is hardly ever any noise in this silent bubble. 

You have not been supplied with books, so you replay happy memories, though they sometimes stray the path of wrong, of regretful and remorseful, of scared and weak and angry. 

You try not to think in these moments, as you can never will yourself to turn away from the memories, even as you feel hot tears slide down your cold cheeks. 

You pray, though you are not a praying man, even as many times as Pike tried to get you to trust your faith to a higher power long enough to fall on your knees and hope it would all turn out alright. Bahamut blessed be, through his power we are made safe, we are made sane. It echoes through the emptiness of your mind much more these days, as they face enemies much stronger than you could have ever hoped you would never encounter. 

Maybe you had always thought too much and not too little. 

You had always tried to plan for the worst, taking the best path, making sure everything went according to plan, though it was hardly ever a plan you ran by the rest of them. You can chuckle at them now, knowing none of them were ever truly mad at you… or so you can hope. You shake the thoughts from your head and hope for a sign that they will be okay. 

One swirling moment of memory, there is a sound like ripping fabric, and he stumbles through. Scruffy, short cropped white hair tousled every which direction, hair that you ache to run your fingers through. You sit still as he gathers himself, first rising to his knees, adjusting crackled glasses, righting his weapons of fire and fury that matched the same pace and heat your heart went at when he looked at you. 

Pink and red and golden brown swirl through the misty cloud and you swear to yourself, rising. Your knees do not creak like you feared they might one day, as you never got quite old enough. You are ageless here, and he looks so very… old. 

You extend a hand to him, and he looks up, up, up at you. You are used to being not much taller than him, when you can remember exactly what it feels like to stand next to them, feeling the heat of their hearts on your skin and the warm rush of your collective breaths during the climax of battle. 

“Long time, no see.” 

He looks, stares, slowly raising a hand to take yours in his own as a grin splits across his face. There are more frown lines than those creased by a smile now, and you worry for him. 

His hand is warm through the leather laced around his palm, fingers calloused where they grip the scales on the back of your hand, and you wonder what it would be like to lace your fingers together for more than a moment, for longer than it takes to help him rise to his creaky feet. He brushes invisible dust and wrinkles off of his pants, and you chuckle. There’s a gray smudge underneath his brow that you restrain yourself from rubbing away, and you’re struck with a wave of dark blue emotion when it occurs to you that it’s simple him, tiredness peeling away layers of him till it leaves the dark gray husk you always feared it would. 

“This is….” he looks around, arms held out as though to steady himself, as though the ground is going to shift suddenly and throw him forward, off balance. Into you. 

“Is this where you live now?” 

There’s a tiny, teasing lilt to his voice, as if you couldn’t have scored some place so mystical in your living days alone. Pink flashes to red and pulses in time with your quickening heartbeat, which you will to calm down. 

It doesn’t. 

“I suppose so. No idea what I must’ve done back when I was living to end up someplace like this, but…” you shrug, hands clasped in the small of your back, “it must’ve been rather good, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Rightfully so….” He turns in circles, already breaking down the theory of the colors and how they function and the patterns in which they appear, for which you want to tell him there is none. He has always been so logical, so analytical, firm and steady and never budging from his answers in his stubborn, bull-headed way that you didn’t, that you never could. He was the stoicism to your spontaneity, the rock to your crashing wave, the hardbound cover to the messy, ink scrawled and smudged pages written in your hand and torn out of a spine again and again, never satisfied. 

“Would you care to entertain an old friend for a bit?” You make a sweeping motion towards the small, two person table, shrunk down from the usual ten place settings. Purple swirls in with red overhead, and you want to swat it away like you would an annoying gnat, though there is no way to. The colors exist on a swirling, milky barrier farther than you could ever walk, never ending though never letting you leave from the same few steps, an eternal cage made of misty, colored fog. 

“I suppose I haven’t got anything else to do.” 

He pulls out a wooden chair for himself and you remember the sound of great wooden chairs scraping across the stone floors of Greyskull Keep, warm morning light flooding in through the open window, a shadow cut in a cross through the middle of it from the window frame. Something warm and golden flutters through your chest like a caged butterfly, too weak, too small to batter against the confines of your ribcage. 

You needn’t pour him his cup of Earl Grey, steeped to perfection and a light, dusky brown color, the color of the wheat in the fields outside your window, rolling like waves on the ocean on the nights you couldn’t sleep for your brain was tormented by thoughts of his warm body beside yours that you couldn’t bear to push away, out of your skull and into the open air where they could be seen and heard by anyone, anything. 

He inhales the rising steam and smiles at you, looking ten years younger, and red pulses overhead in time with the flutter of your heart. 

“You know me so well.” 

“Of course,” you say, grinning your toothy grin, and you swear something feels…. Different. A small pulse of emotion that isn’t your’s, straining to be free from a man made confine, constructed into a perfect square box with no cracks or holes. 

“Only the best for my dearest friend.” 

You can feel something push and pull at your teeth, at your jaw, at your tongue, when they move to utter the word, “friend”. Like they want to move differently, a place you aren’t strong enough to go, but a place your heart longs for like no other. 

“I don’t get many visitors, you know.” 

He looks up again, rubbing the scruff along his chin, the quiet noise of leather against prickly hair reaching your ears through the silence. He hums and sips, Adam’s apple bobbing. You swallow, thickly, and busy yourself with your own steaming cup of Earl Grey. You haven’t even been much of a fan of sweeter teas, but he seems to enjoy them so. You almost choke on the sweetness and he chuckles, setting an elbow on the table, resting a cheek against his propped up fist. Wrinkles appear in the pristine white cloth underneath his elbow, running like the great veins of a mighty river to your side of the table, like your doubtlessly twisted circulatory system, pumping blood that has never pumped hotter or faster than it is right now. 

You sit in the silence, soaking in his warmth, feeling cold joints restore that you had never known were cold before. He flickers, like that of candlelight, entire image shifting, pulsing in and out of your vision. He solidifies for a second and you smile apologetically, setting your teacup down onto the flower patterned saucer with a crisp click. 

“Looks like this is goodbye for now, old friend.” 

He smiles a sad, watery smile, clasping his gloved hands together. Even though he is scruffy and tired and looks more sleep deprived than you have ever seen, a silent sadness clouding his normally vibrantly, achingly bright eyes, he looks every inch the prince he is. 

You have no idea if Whitestone even still stands, or if it fell to the same beast your own kingdom did. 

He flickers once again, opacity shifting rapidly, shuddering. Confused violet and regretful, deep purple descend in a cloud overhead, feeling as though they might swallow you up. You can feel the moisture on your skin. They feel so close. 

“Goodbye, my lo-” 

And with a sound like shattering glass, he is gone. His tea sits, steaming, tablecloth wrinkled, the only evidence that he was ever there aside from the cold heat like that of hypothermia hammering at your chest from the inside, threatening to break free. 

It is only then that you realize the moisture on your cheeks are your own cold, cold tears.


End file.
